We were zombies
together, stiff-legged marching over hills and fields: one people,
one purpose, one
mind, driven by a powerful urge we could not understand. From
our graves we came,
or risen from hospital beds, or stepping away from plane crashes
and war zones and
gangbang back alleys. Newcomers were accepted without regard
for country or
creed, just as they were: pale teen suicides, blueface drowning
victims, the natural deaths. We did not walk too fast for the
badly decomposed or maimed.
Thus our strange
little band continued to increase. We progressed through cornfields
and small towns,
through the shells of strip malls and deserted cities, ever yearning.
Murmuring among ourselves, fixing glazed eyes on the boarded-up
stores where we
had once shopped,
the office centers where we once worked, the gated communities where
we once lived separate lives. Now we were on the march, all in this
together. We scrounged for new recruits everywhere, as fervently
as if we were on a spiritual
quest of some kind.
Perhaps we were. True, some may have overplayed their part,
murmuring brains, brains, and frightening small children, but
that was all quite passé
and unnecessary. We
were indomitable: no illness or blow from a shovel could ever
break up our ragtag
but powerful collective. We had no long-term worries: the world
would eventually run
short of weapons, and till then each bullet expended only bred
more slapstick
pacifists like ourselves. Peace, it is thought, must eventually
prevail
in a hungry,
post-zombie world. But who can separate the living from the living
dead,
so stripped as we
all are? And what else is that hunger inside us, if not love?
Line breaks should be on "people," "From" "crashes" "regard" "victims," "maimed." "cornfields" "yearning." "we" "communities" "together." "spiritual" "part," "passe" "ever" "world" "bred" "prevail" "dead," and "love?"
ReplyDeleteA lesson to other submitters out there to use hard returns at the ends of lines--my bad! MVM